Management Communication: Leading and Managing Effective Virtual Teams

This report addresses the critical aspects of leading and managing virtual teams, particularly focusing on a marketing team spread across Sydney, Beijing, New York, and Mumbai. It emphasizes the importance of effective communication skills, establishing 24x7 work cycles, and providing proper training to team members. The report highlights the need for updated communication tools, clear communication protocols, and disciplined leadership that leads by example. It also covers the significance of building trust and accountability, understanding cultural differences, and empowering employees. Addressing potential language barriers and fostering interpersonal communication skills are also crucial. The report concludes by outlining key traits for virtual team members, such as high motivation, technological proficiency, and adaptability, and offers recommendations for further discussion and implementation.

Management Communication
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:

MEMORANDUM
TO:
CC:
FROM:
DATE:
SUBJECT: Critical areas that need to be addressed when leading and managing virtual teams.
The Sydney HQ is working on the development of a new marketing team where the members
of the team will be located in four different cities namely Sydney, Beijing, New York and
Mumbai. They are all in different time zones and this requires an advanced Virtual Team
spread over these four above mentioned time zones using real time and asynchronous
communication (Maynard, and Gilson 2014).
The first and foremost factor is the possession of effective and efficient communication skills
which would decide the effectiveness of the teams all over the locations. The teams will have
to build a work cycle that is useful 24x7 (Krumm et al. 2016). Good communications skills
would further support their cause and cause lesser number of issues. So it is the team leader’s
responsibility to provide the members with proper training and development programmes.
The team leader needs to address all the issues and proactively provide important
information. The communication tools used needs to be fully updated and its proficiency with
the technology should be top notch. The teams need to establish a proper communication
protocols to be followed under different circumstances. Distant communication needs to
exemplify the principles which are its availability, priority, synchronous communication and
context. A virtual team leader needs to be disciplined, organised, and influential and the team

leader should always lead by example. The team leader needs to open with the feedbacks and
always welcome other team members’ inputs.
The team leader needs to build a team on the basis of its purpose, trust and accountability.
The delegation of work should follow a proper patter with accountability. He/she needs to
understand the cultural differences and frame the working structure of the team accordingly.
Establishing peer to peer accountability would help in structuring the team work more
efficiently. The team needs to be ready for all the unexpected disruptions that could probably
occur in a distant communication setup. The verbal agreements should always be
accompanied by a written one as it helps in maintaining the accountability as well as keeping
a track on the work progressions. Due to the different locations, language barrier is going to
be an issue if a proper solution is not finalised by the team leader to neutralise or at least
minimise its effect (Hoch and Kozlowski 2014).
A team works better if the employees have been empowered properly. If the employees are
given the freedom to make certain decisions and monitor the work, the outcome of the same
is evidently better. The team that works more virtually, development of interpersonal
communication skills matter a lot (Carlson et al. 2017).
A virtual team member needs to possess a few traits such as high level of motivation and
confidence, supporting and cooperating with others, proficiency with the technology,
optimum utilization of time and resources, takes full responsibility of the work assigned and
being accountable for the same and being dynamic in nature by accepting the changes with
lesser friction and comfortably work in an unstructured environment (Pangil and Moi Chan
2014).
I will be ready to discuss these recommendations with you and follow through the decisions
taken during our discussion meeting.

References
Carlson, J.R., Carlson, D.S., Hunter, E.M., Vaughn, R.L. and George, J.F., 2017. Virtual
team effectiveness: Investigating the moderating role of experience with computer-mediated
communication on the impact of team cohesion and openness. In Remote Work and
Collaboration: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice (pp. 687-706). IGI Global.
Hoch, J.E. and Kozlowski, S.W., 2014. Leading virtual teams: Hierarchical leadership,
structural supports, and shared team leadership. Journal of applied psychology, 99(3), p.390.
Krumm, S., Kanthak, J., Hartmann, K. and Hertel, G., 2016. What does it take to be a virtual
team player? The knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics required in virtual
teams. Human Performance, 29(2), pp.123-142.
Maynard, M.T. and Gilson, L.L., 2014. The role of shared mental model development in
understanding virtual team effectiveness. Group & Organization Management, 39(1), pp.3-
32.
Pangil, F. and Moi Chan, J., 2014. The mediating effect of knowledge sharing on the
relationship between trust and virtual team effectiveness. Journal of Knowledge
Management, 18(1), pp.92-106.